Argentina Small Storybooks Collection

While some of the materials in this collection come from the late 1920s to early 1930s, the bulk come from the 1940s to 1950s, which places them in the so-called Golden Age of Argentine publishing. The works of the three publishers represented in this collection were all very popular in their time and are well-remembered as an important part of childhood by many Argentine adults.

Editorial Atlántida

In some ways, the storybooks published by Editorial Atlántida are the most significant in this collection, mainly for the contributions of Constancio C. Vigil (1876-1954), an Uruguayan whose family moved to Argentina for political reasons. He was a journalist who founded a number of minor magazines, including La Alborada, Mundo Argentina, and Atlántida, and helped establish a number of others. With the establishment of Editorial Atlántida in 1918, Vigil became a Major publisher of magazines about sports (El Grafico), women’s issues (Para ti), and childhood life (Billiken), among many others. Billiken remained the most popular of the magazines for several decades. At the same time, Vigil began publishing both adult and children’s books through Editorial Atlántida, many of them those he authored. While the adult books were successful, Vigil became famous through his more than 100 works for children. These works, the (Vigil’s Stories for ital were inexpensively manufactured and affordable to children across South America. They were immediately recognizable for their uniform size (6 x 5 inches) and brightly-drawn covers (often created by some of Argentina’s best-known illustrators). The works were numbered, and constantly re-issued, often gathered into different groupings to make collectible sets.

While Vigil’s tales contain many familiar tropes of children’s literature – anthropomorphized animals, heroic children, long ago kingdoms, and so forth, the stories are often moralistic by nature, with good behaviors rewarded, and even minor discretions leading to punishment. As such, parents were comfortable giving Vigil’s stories to children, often as birthday or religious confirmation presents. While the plots, characters, and tones of the stories may appear dated, some of Vigil’s creations –e.g., The Clockmaker Monkey or The Little Traveling Ant – have become archetypal and are constantly reintroduced to children in new formats.

Editorial Tor

Editorial Tor was founded in 1916 by Juan Carlos Torrendell. Tor established itself quickly as a publisher of cheaply produced volumes, where quality had less value than cost-cutting. These books included biographies, essays, manuals, reprints, collections of short stories, and novels – whose publishing was often funded by the authors themselves.

In 1930, Editorial Tor acquired its first rotary press, which allowed it to improve production significantly. While the quality of the materials was still low, it found a way to make a mark on the children’s market by establishing the La Abeja (The Bee) series in 1940. These books are of a uniform size (5 x 7 inches) and length (initially 64 pages, later 32 pages) with thin cardboard covers, and brightly drawn covers, and multi-colored illustrations throughout issue. There were 100 titles published in the La Abeja series between 1940 and 1950. Unlike the works of Constancio Vigil, La Abeja books were adaptations of a wide range of established works – generally fairy tales and European children’s literature, but also stories by Washington Irving, Jonathan Swift, and even Geoffrey Chaucer.

Águila Saint

Águila Saint was a factory founded in 1880 by Abel François Charles Saint, A Frenchman who had moved to Buenos Aires. The factory first focused on coffee, and was very successful. Saint was to find his greatest success, however, in finding ways to serve and market hot chocolate for drinking. This led the way for all kinds of chocolate products, which made Águila Saint famous all over South America.

From 1921 to 1932, Águila Saint produced a magazine, titled Colibri, paginas para los ninos (Hummingbird, pages for children). Colibri was produced weekly during the school year, and students could "buy" it by presenting two labels from Águila Saint chocolates. While there were some fictional stories in the magazine, each issue also contained a a variety of information to educate and entertain children. there is often scientific information, historical accounts, biographical vignettes, and information about other countries. The cover subject was covered in some depth in the middle of the magazine. Topics includes legndary characters, sports, gardening, weaving, and so forth. As with the other series, items in Águila Saint have a strong educational mission.

The distribution of the publication represent the egalitarian bent of the publisher. The monthly issues were not priced and sold, per se, as the publisher was afraid that only the privileged could collect them. Instead, they were given free to children in exchange for 20 labels from Aguila Chocolates. At the end of the year, Águila Saint gave children a free binder folder, so they could gather the year's issues together and keep them as a book.